Charles Maxson has lifted my spirits, hit the nail on the head so to speak. Says Charles, “I spell like siht.” Amen brother, join the crowd - although my problem is not actually spelling per se, it's typing.

You see, I typ elike siht.

See?

My method of key-pressing is what you might call the Modified Greg HUghes Hunt and Peck Method (with the misplaced capitalization left as an intentional part of the name, simply to remind us that it's an imperfect method).

I have worked in journalism, as a police officer, and as a computer geek of various sorts. All of these jobs required me to type - a lot. I just never learned how to type “The Right Way.”

But hey - as far as I'm concerned, so what. That's what spell check is for. I use grammar well, can write my way out of a box whenever needed, and am often leaned upon to help clean up writing that needs to be disseminated to large numbers of people.

But still, I type with four fingers, hit the space bar with one thumb, use only one of the available shift keys with a fifth finger (and that's all that finger does), and I lean heavilly on spell check to help correct my typing rather than my spelling.

And Charles - I'm with ya bro' - add spell check to IM, and I might even start to look smart. Taht woudl be ccol.